I decided to follow along with a librarian blog meme, the “library day in the life“. Since it is the summer, my day today is much different than a day during the semester. The most notable difference is the lack of meetings. Although the summer is a great time to make changes and get projects done, it can be very difficult to pull together all of the interested individuals.
7:55am – Arrive at work, Make tea. The day can officially start.
8-8:30am – Check email, calendar. Lots of folks are on vacation this week, which seems to account for my lack of meetings today. Accept some future meeting invitations, decline others. Realize that one librarian who had reference desk hours today won’t be here. Email colleagues to see if we can split her hours. Wishing Oracle calendar could actually interface with other things (esp. iPhone)
8:30am – Write up a blog post about our switch from SciFinder Client version to SciFinder Web. Checking to see if appropriate URLs have been added to our proxy server so folks can get to SciFinder off campus.
8:50am – Got distracted by Explored Barnes and Noble’s new eBook reader for iPhone. I already have the Kindle reader for iPhone, which I love. I’d like to encourage some competition in the eBook market, though, so I think my next few purchases will be from B&N.
9:00am – First reference shift of the day, substituting for an absent colleague. With very few students on campus, and even fewer in the library, this is very slow. One person asked for tape, but no reference questions.
10am – Another hour of reference for absent colleague. I will have three hours of reference today, one more than usual.
While at the reference desk this morning I manage to:
- Catch up on a few blogs
- Chat with our Sys admin to get some ezproxy settings changed for the switch to SciFinder web
- Resolve a broken link in the blog post I just wrote
- Smile and wave at a tour group as they point out the research help desk
- Review a list of action items for a campus wide committee I’m on
- Figure out why a link won’t work in our Resources by Subject lists
- Explore possible ways of fixing that link, which is being problemmatic.
- Finally fix the troublesome link
- Smile and wave again at another tour group
- Added google analytics to our new mobile webpages
- Answered 1 reference question (How to find a copy of Civilization and its Discontents)
11:00am – Make tea, get a snack.
11:10am – Start cleaning desk. Constant distractions as I stop to look up interesting things from the pieces of paper I should be throwing away or filing. Some of the interesting things:
- Math books from the MAA
- IOP Librarian Forum on Facebook
- Articles from sample copies of magazines I picked up at SLA 2009 in June
- Finally figured out how to import our library blog to our library Facebook page. Did the same thing for my own blog on my own Facebook page. Also claimed the vanity URL for our library page.
12:15pm – Read an article about “making chat widgets work for online reference” from Online magazine (not freely available online). Passed it along to a colleague who is on the committee working to implement web chat here.
12:30pm – Lunch. Tried to read a Barnes and Noble eBook on my iPhone, but spent 15 minutes trying to “unlock” the book with my credit card number. Why can’t I just log in to my B&N account? Kindle reader wins this round.
1pm – Committee Meeting – “Creating a Collaborative Research Center”. I am on a campus committee here to look at ways to increase collaborative research (and the funding for that research).
2pm – Back on the reference desk, updating the Geology subject guide. Distracted by Explored the neat search options on Mindat.org. Finished adding some excellent resources. Emailed faculty to inform them of the changes and to ask for additional suggestions.
3pm – Finally answered a real reference question just as my reference shift was ending. Student was looking to see if we had any of the movies she had to watch for an assignment (most were checked out, but one was still available).
3:30pm – Head home. I’m leaving early on Monday and Tuesday of this week to spend some time with my family. This helps balance out all the times during the semester where I will stay late.
the Undergraduate Science Librarian 